(05-16-2016 08:00 AM)200yrs2late Wrote: The failure of Obamacare is absolutely the justification for a single payer system that some have wanted. I find it hard to believe that Obama knew it would be a failure though. the man is too much of a narcissist for that. IMO opinion he either truly believed Obamacare would work, or he was duped like the rest of the public that supported Obamacare.
Maybe, but Barack Obama didn't really draft Obamacare. He simply gave the broad strokes... appointed the people to design it and then championed it/sold it to the people. There are so many provisions that are so obviously designed to act like a fish-hook... easy to insert, impossible to remove once inserted... that it is obvious that the designers knew that 'the truth' would never pass with the people, even if they had the votes in government to pass it. Pelosi essentially admitted this, knowing that 'once we pass it', you've given 'free' stuff to millions and once given, it will be tough to take it away from them.
The tax/penalty... insurance vs healthcare... 'you can keep your plan and doctor' when so many obviously couldn't... save money... Medicaid rather than Medicare expansion to hide the real costs/push costs to the states for Federal mandates... expiring (after 2 terms) subsidies, exemptions for purely political reasons and (imo) the most appalling of them all by Democrats lamenting the wealth gap, that one of the LAST provisions to be enacted (rather than one of the first) was to 'tax the rich'.
If he was duped, then he's truly stupid. He had people smart enough to know what was going to happen and willing to tell him the truth about 'why' it was a penalty rather than a tax and why expand Medicaid rather than Medicare etc... so they HAD to tell him... and he had no reason to think they were just lying to him.
Of all the things I'd say about Obama, being THAT ignorant just wouldn't be one of them. But maybe I'm wrong when it comes to his politics. I wouldn't say Hillary is stupid either, but HER healthcare plan was an even bigger mess than Obamacare.